News

Our Statement on the Killing of Maurice Stallard and Vickie Lee Jones in Jeffersontown, Kentucky

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Despite widespread calls to ensure “Black Lives Matter” we grieve again as two more people are killed by what by all appearances is a White supremacist or nationalist soon after he had attempted to enter a house of worship.  Maurice Stallard and Vickie Lee Jones were simply running errands when coldly murdered in one more horrifying expression of White supremacist ideology.  Maurice Stallard was with his 12 year-old grandson who watched shocked and traumatized as his loving grandfather, there to buy poster board for the child, was killed.  Our hearts go out to their families and friends suffering their loss. 

The murders at Kroger in Jeffersontown are intended to terrify and subjugate an entire community in the service of a disgusting and inhumane hate that is growing at alarming rates in our country.  As with the history of anti-Semitism that creates the context for the killing at the Tree of Life * Or L’Simcha Congregation, anti-Black racism and the history of systematic lynching, murders, as well as legally sanctioned killings cannot be ignored in this last atrocity. 

The responsibility for unleashing increased violence against Black people lies with the political leaders and media voices that have worked to legitimate the illegitimate and normalize the deeply immoral.  White nationalism and supremacist ideology are an abomination sharply and dangerously at odds with our collective ideals of equality and human dignity.  The current political and media rhetoric triggering these acts of violence is indecent to an extraordinary degree and must be challenged as such.  We add our voices in defense of the Black community.  As a multi-racial organization, we share your sorrow and stand in deep solidarity during these difficult times.